Many systems require a wiring and/or electrical contacts in order to supply electrical power to devices. Omitting these wires and contacts provides for an improved user experience. Traditionally, this has been achieved using batteries located in the devices but this approach has a number of disadvantages including extra weight, bulk and the need to frequently replace or recharge the batteries. Recently, the approach of using wireless inductive power transfer has received increasing interest.
Part of this increased interest is due to the number and variety of portable and mobile devices having exploded in the last decade. For example, the use of mobile phones, tablets, media players etc. has become ubiquitous. Such devices are generally powered by internal batteries and the typical use scenario often requires recharging of batteries or direct wired powering of the device from an external power supply.
As mentioned, most present day devices require a wiring and/or explicit electrical contacts to be powered from an external power supply. However, this tends to be impractical and requires the user to physically insert connectors or otherwise establish a physical electrical contact. It also tends to be inconvenient to the user by introducing lengths of wire. Typically, power requirements also differ significantly, and currently most devices are provided with their own dedicated power supply resulting in a typical user having a large number of different power supplies with each power supply being dedicated to a specific device. Although, internal batteries may prevent the need for a wired connection to an external power supply, this approach only provides a partial solution as the batteries will need recharging (or replacing which is expensive). The use of batteries may also add substantially to the weight and potentially cost and size of the devices.
In order to provide a significantly improved user experience, it has been proposed to use a wireless power supply wherein power is inductively transferred from a transmitter coil in a power transmitter device to a receiver coil in the individual devices.
Power transmission via magnetic induction is a well-known concept, mostly applied in transformers which have a tight coupling between the primary transmitter coil and the secondary receiver coil. By separating the primary transmitter coil and the secondary receiver coil between two devices, wireless power transfer between the devices becomes possible based on the principle of a loosely coupled transformer.
Such an arrangement allows a wireless power transfer to the device without requiring any wires or physical electrical connections. Indeed, it may simply allow a device to be placed adjacent to, or on top of, the transmitter coil in order to be recharged or powered externally. For example, power transmitter devices may be arranged with a horizontal surface on which a device can simply be placed in order to be powered.
Furthermore, such wireless power transfer arrangements may advantageously be designed such that the power transmitter device can be used with a range of power receiver devices. In particular, a wireless power transfer standard known as the Qi standard has been defined and is currently being developed further. This standard allows power transmitter devices that meet the Qi standard to be used with power receiver devices that also meet the Qi standard without these having to be from the same manufacturer or having to be dedicated to each other. The Qi standard further includes some functionality for allowing the operation to be adapted to the specific power receiver device (e.g. dependent on the specific power drain).
The Qi standard is developed by the Wireless Power Consortium and more information can e.g. be found on their website: http://www.wirelesspowerconsortium.com/index.html, where in particular the defined Standards documents can be found.
In order to support the interworking and interoperability of power transmitters and power receivers, it is preferable that these devices can communicate with each other, i.e. it is desirable if communication between the power transmitter and power receiver is supported, and preferably if communication is supported in both directions.
The Qi standard supports communication from the power receiver to the power transmitter thereby enabling the power receiver to provide information that may allow the power transmitter to adapt to the specific power receiver. In the current standard, a unidirectional communication link from the power receiver to the power transmitter has been defined and the approach is based on a philosophy of the power receiver being the controlling element. To prepare and control the power transfer between the power transmitter and the power receiver, the power receiver specifically communicates information to the power transmitter.
The unidirectional communication is achieved by the power receiver performing load modulation wherein a loading applied to the secondary receiver coil by the power receiver is varied to provide a modulation of the power transfer signal. The resulting changes in the electrical characteristics (e.g. variations in the current draw) can be detected and decoded (demodulated) by the power transmitter.
However, a limitation of the Qi system is that it does not support communication from the power transmitter to the power receiver (at least in the low power Qi specification). Furthermore, load modulation such as developed for Qi may be suboptimal in some applications.
Indeed, communication between receiver and transmitter in a power transfer system such as the Qi system is faced with multiple challenges and difficulties. In particular, there is typically a conflict between the requirements and characteristics of the power transfer signal and the desires for the communication. Typically, the system requires close interaction between the power transfer and communication functions. For example, the system is designed based on the concept of only one signal being inductively coupled between the transmitter and the power receiver, namely the power transfer signal itself. However, using the power transfer signal itself for not only performing a power transfer but also for carrying information results in difficulties.
For example, in many scenarios, the power transfer signal amplitude may be dynamically and periodically varying resulting in the power transfer signal not always being suitable for modulation. Indeed, if the power transfer signal amplitude temporarily is reduced to substantially zero, there is no signal to be modulated—whether for directly e.g. amplitude or frequency modulation of the power transfer signal to provide communication from power transmitter to power receiver or for load modulation of the power transfer signal to provide communication from power receiver to power transmitter.
As another example, using a load modulation approach wherein the power receiver communicates data by load modulation (such as in the Qi system) requires that the normal load is relatively constant. However, this cannot be guaranteed in many applications.
E.g., if wireless power transfer is to be used to power a motor driven appliance (such as e.g. a blender), the amplitude of this current is strongly related to the load of the motor. If the motor load is changing, the motor current is changing as well. This results in the amplitude of the inverter current also changing with the load. This load variation will interfere with the load modulation, resulting in degraded communication. Indeed, in practice it is typically very difficult to detect load modulation for loads that include a motor as part of the load.
In order to address such issues, it has been proposed to use a completely separate communication technology for providing communication between the power transmitter and power receiver. However, whereas such an approach may solve some problems, it typically introduces other disadvantages.
For example, it typically introduces a risk that a communication may be established which is not between the two parties involved in the power transfer. This will typically lead to faulty and potentially less safe operation. E.g., the use of separate communication channels could result in interference between the operations of different power transfer operations which could result in an undesirable situation with excessive power levels. For example, the control operations may interfere with each other, e.g. by the control data from the power receiver of one power transfer operation being used to control the power transfer of another nearby power receiver. The separation between communication and power transfer signals may result in less robust and less fail safe operation.
Hence, an improved power transfer system would be advantageous and in particular a system allowing improved communication support, increased reliability, increased flexibility, facilitated implementation, reduced sensitivity to load variations, improved safety and/or improved performance would be advantageous.